In this week’s blog, I’m going to switch gears a bit and do a little “teaching” about this whole topic of “working in co-creative partnerships with Nature and Spirit.” It’s a subject of as equal importance to me to share with you as the spiritual healing and development tools I offer.

On my web site and in previous blog postings you may have noticed a lot of language about working in co-creative partnership with Nature and Spirit and about “soil-less gardens” and probably wondered, “What the heck is she talking about?!” 

Now, I’ve offered some explanations on this topic of “Co-Creative Partnerships with Nature and Spirit”  but it feels like time to delve into the subject more. In part because, I do say in several places on my website that I “teach people how to create their own healing partnerships with Nature and Spirit.” And it is, after all, part of my DDP for the soil-less garden I call the Center for Healing Partnerships!

So here I go. And in particular, I want to begin to introduce to you the topic of Nature’s Yearly Cycle, and how when we consciously align ourselves with that cycle, amazing things can happen!

But first, I want to give some more background on this whole topic of working co-creatively with Nature and Spirit, and to do that I need to talk a bit more about the concept of a “garden” from Nature’s perspective.

From Nature’s perspective, a garden is any endeavor/environment that is “initiated by humans, given its purpose by humans and direction by humans and maintained with the help of humans.” (Perelandra Soil-Less Garden Companion, p. 9) The funny thing is that while humans tend to see gardens as an expression of Nature and assume that gardens are always “growing” in some kind of tangible medium, such as soil, or rocks, or water!

But Nature sees things differently. To Nature gardens are always a human expression! To Nature anything that fits the criteria of being initiated, defined and maintained by humans is a GARDEN! This includes a business, a book, a movie script, a website, a job, a house, a government, a nation, a carpet factory, a farm, a botanical garden, a state park, etc., etc. You name any human endeavor you can think of that is initiated, defined and maintained by humans, and from Nature’s perspective it’s a garden!

Now when a garden -- whether soil-based or soil-less -- is initiated, defined and maintained without any consideration of “the laws of nature,” such a garden is from Nature’s perspective, “human dominant.” Often the ripple effects of purely human-dominated “gardens” are a lot of imbalance, distortion and adverse “unintentional consequences.” For example: prescription drugs that do more damage than good.

Nature considers those endeavors by humans that do try to cooperate at some level or another with the “laws of nature” as “nature friendly.” Organic and biodynamic farming and gardening and other land-management practices that try to respect Nature’s ways and processes are good examples of "nature-friendly gardens.” So are approaches to train and interact with animals in which the people consider the natural needs and tendencies of those animals. Nature-friendly gardens tend to have more success, or are more “healthy” and create less imbalance and adverse unintended consequences than purely human-dominated gardens. And this is a good thing!

But we have the opportunity now, as human consciousness and awareness expands to new levels on this planet (and elsewhere!), to take things to an even greater level when it comes to working with Nature.

A “garden” in which humans consciously understand Nature to be a “full partner” in the design and operation of that environment, AND actually act on this knowledge, is what can be called a “co-creative garden.” Humans and Nature working together in real, authentic, mutually respectful partnership, with Nature contributing its “expertise” and humans contributing their “expertise.”

(Just what the expertise of each is gets a little tricky for our current discussion, but if you’re really curious, I recommend the book Co-Creative Science: A Revolution in Science Providing Real Solutions for Today’s Health and Environment by Machaelle Small Wright.)

What’s the advantage of “gardening” this way ? BALANCE!  “When a garden operates in balance . . . , it is in step with the overall dynamics of the whole. The various parts that comprise the garden operate optimally, and the garden as a whole operates optimally.” (Perelandra Soil-Less Garden Companion, p. 10)

My trying to write this week’s blog is a perfect illustration of the difference between going at things from a human-dominant approach to doing things from a co-creative approach!

When I started writing this week’s blog, I could tell I was going down the wrong path. In other words, in my “human-dominated" approach, I was heading in a direction with the topic of this week’s blog that was not in balance with what was appropriate for me to share at this time and for you to read! But because I do make a “good-faith effort” to take a co-creative approach with “soil-less garden” I call the "Center for Healing Partnership" and all the smaller “gardens” within that larger garden, including this blog, I got the strong intuitive hit that something wasn’t “right” in my approach. And so, I remembered to check with my soil-less garden team for my business and my fellow coning members got me back on the right track and are doing a good job of keeping me on track too even as I type this very sentence!! 

Now, balance is Nature’s bread and butter. Nature knows balance inside and out. Nature innately knows what balance IS and HOW to achieve it! And the fact is that balance is NOT something human beings innately know or understand. That’s why we need to consciously partner with Nature because Nature is going to help us achieve and create the balance we so urgently need in our lives and in our world.

Now the topic of balance is something I’d like to talk more about, but I’ll save that for another “lesson.” For now, I want to get back to the whole point of this blog and that’s to introduce you to Nature’s Yearly Cycle as defined and played out in Nature. Even more, I want to encourage you to consider STARTING to develop your own conscious, co-creative partnership with Nature by “tuning into this cycle,” and aligning your personal evolutionary/spiritual cycle with it.

I know full well that this whole “soil-less garden” thing can seem more than a little overwhelming, and while I do hope that someday you’ll investigate this fascinating approach to doing and being on this planet, I also want to encourage you to start somewhere and tuning into Nature’s Yearly Cycle, at whatever level you feel capable of at this time, is a great place to begin creating your own co-creative healing partnership with Nature and Spirit.

Western culture associates the beginning of the New Year with January 1st. And when asked, most people would probably say that Spring is the start of Nature’s Yearly Cycle. After all, Spring is when the ‘world of Nature” seems to “come alive again” after the winter’s sleep or rest. But, as Machaelle Small Wright found out when she made the conscious choice to learn about Nature from Nature within the context of the Perelandra Garden, Nature sees things a bit differently!

In her book, Perelandra Garden Workbook Second Edition: A Complete Guide to Gardening with Nature Intelligences, Machaelle talks about 4 dates throughout the year that are especially linked to Nature and which define Nature’s understanding of what constitutes a “yearly cycle.” These dates are, in the northern hemisphere, as follows:

• the Fall Equinox (on or close to September 21st),
• the Winter Solstice (on or close to December 21st),
• the Spring Equinox (on or close to March 21st) and
• the Summer Solstice (on or close to June 21st).

These dates constitute the start dates of the different segments of Nature's Yearly Cycle, also known as the Solstice/Equinox Cycle. Over the next couple of weeks, I will go through each of these segments and show how they all fit together to form the whole of the yearly cycle of nature's energy. For the remainder of this week's discussion, I'll address the first segment of this cycle.

Now, it may surprise you to learn that in Nature, the Fall Equinox is the day the year’s new cycle actually begins! The Fall Equinox is the day when the “call goes out for the new cycle to activate and begin its formation processes at the deepest of energy levels.” (PGWB, pp. 181-182)

Another way of saying this is that the Fall Equinox is the natural “New Year’s Day” of the entire Planet and all that exists on it, including for us!! And, as summer winds down and we anticipate the coming of Fall, I urge you to consider shifting your thinking about when the New Year begins.

And, even more, I enthusiastically encourage you to consider the idea of consciously aligning your own, personal evolutionary process with Nature’s Yearly Cycle, to bring your own evolutionary process as a human being alive on this beautiful planet in sync with Nature’s yearly cycle, to receive the tremendous support and balance that can come from such an alignment, from such a conscious, co-creative partnership.

The process of doing this is quite simple – or it can be a little more elaborate if you're into ceremony! You don't even need to set up an official soil-less garden nor open a coning. But if you know how to do these things, by all means this first. But again, you don't need to. At this stage of your learning, all you would need to do is consciously connect to the larger energetic happenings of the planet and you'll be on your way. So, here's the simple approach:

First, find out when the exact time of the Fall Equinox is for your time zone. (The Fall Equinox for 2009 is 4:18 PM CDT on September 22.) To prepare, take a few moments ahead of this time to quiet yourself and then, at the exact time of the equinox, make a statement like this, either out loud or to yourself:

"I welcome the next cycle of my own evolutionary process and I declare my intention to consciously assists and participate in its unfolding over the coming year and to align myself to the right timing of it's unfolding." 

Here’s what Machaelle has to say about why she herself does this for her personal cycle as well as for the Perelandra Garden:

I have learned from nature that all that exists on planet Earth is grounded fully and completely in form and physical action through the energy of nature. That energy commingles with the human dynamics of thought and creativity and serves to fuse into these dynamics the matter, means and action necessary for grounding. It is the natural law of the planet. It is called involution/evolution. The energy of nature (involution) links with and energizes the creative, foward-moving spirit of humankind (evolution) to create one cohesive, efficient unit of life energy. I have seen this principle demonstrated often in areas outside the usual nature environment. It seemed reasonable to me that my personal process would be greatly assisted if I formally and consciously participated in the fusion process between it [her personal evolutionary process] and the nature energies.

. . . I can’t give your hard evidence that there has been a drastic change in how I move through my personal cycle each year. However, I feel that there has been an enormous amount of clarity added to the process, it’s purpose and direction––and this could certainly be attributed to my conscious participation in the fusion of nature energy through the equinox/solstice cycle. It’s like the pieces of my life and the direction I am taking within this year’s period are appropriately energized and enhanced 4 times, and the result is that those pieces fall into place smoothly, even effortlessly––and I experience clarity. (PGWB, pp. 182-183)

When I first learned about Nature’s Yearly Cycle, I was immediately drawn to it. Fall has always felt like the time of new beginnings for me, perhaps because the new school year starts in the Fall. But I like to think that I’ve always has an innate sense of this cycle! And so to consciously align my own process with the natural energy dynamics of the planet itself, makes perfect sense to me.

As I have become more attuned to the dynamics and flow of Nature’s Yearly Cycle, I too see the pieces of my life and my process and what I am consciously and purposely attempting to create in my life fall into place with much more appropriateness than I could ever orchestrate “on my own.”

I am fond of saying “There’s so much to us than we are consciously aware.” And there is so much that is a part of our Soul’s evolutionary process that is beyond our full conscious understanding. But by aligning my personal cycle with the natural energy dynamics of the Planet, I have a way of being connected to my Soul’s process that is much stronger and so much more capable of keeping me on-track with that process than if I tried to navigate through my life without this very powerful compass.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll continue to share with you what I know and understand about Nature’s Yearly Cycle, taking you through each piece of the equinox/solstice cycle and sharing more about how I have seen this cycle play out in and benefit my own life, my own spiritual/evolutionary process.

As enticement for you to "stay tuned" to learn more, I will say that I’ve found consciously aligning to Nature’s Yearly Cycle to be a tremendously wonderful way to live and structure my life! And, building on a topic of last week's blog (energy profiling) you've probably come to see that "it’s just my nature” to want to share with you things I find valuable and to encourage you to consider to giving yourself this Gift as well!

So, until next week, Namaste. Julia